


Would I Have the Strength to Stand

by one_of_those_crushing_scenes



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentioned Nick Fury - Freeform, Mentioned Peter Parker - Freeform, Minor Mary Jane Watson, Minor Tony Stark - Freeform, POV Clint Barton, Weepy drunks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 06:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13452669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_of_those_crushing_scenes/pseuds/one_of_those_crushing_scenes
Summary: Clint is out of arrows, and his regular supplier is out of stock. He stops by Bobbi’s to pick up some raw materials from her home lab, but gets a little sidetracked.





	Would I Have the Strength to Stand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [randomfatechidna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomfatechidna/gifts).



> Title is from “[If You’re Not the One](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6nevGNYTkA)” by Daniel Bedingfield.
> 
> The prompt is for hurt/comfort with alcohol; I originally wanted to write established relationship, and @[randomfatedchinda](http://archiveofourown.org/users/randomfatechidna/) prompted me for fluff, but this fic doesn’t follow direction very well. It’s very much _not_ established relationship and full of angst, but it is hurt/comfort and there is alcohol involved, so at least I didn’t go too far off the rails.

Usually, Clint gets his explosives from Tony.

This week, though, Tony’s off-planet and has been for over a week, and the lab has run out of both saltpeter and liquid nitrogen, and Clint doesn’t have the proper clearance in the system to put in a new order (which is definitely something that’s going to need to be fixed, with shouting if necessary, when Tony gets back).

The redhead at the desk keeps trying different keyboard combinations and muttering under her breath. Finally, she looks up at him and smiles apologetically. “I’m sorry, it doesn’t look like there’s anything I can do. We reworked the budget recently and changed the standard order, and we can’t make any changes without his fingerprint and retinal patterns.”

Talk about being a control freak.

“What, and you don’t have that?” Clint asks, only half joking.

A wry smile crosses her face. “To be honest, when I say ‘fingerprint,’ I’m talking about an encrypted key that he keeps on his person and changes every two weeks, and when I say ‘retinal patterns’—well, suffice it to say that it’s not his biological eye we’re talking about.”

He whistles. “Wow.”

“Again, I’m so sorry. Do you want me to put in a message to try and find out when he’ll be back?”

“No, it's all right, I'll call him myself. Thanks anyway, Ms. Watson.”

\---

Fortunately, the Avengers identicards get reception throughout the solar system.

“Yep, definitely my bad,” Tony says. “I’ll fix it when I get back. In the meantime, Bobbi should have. I borrow from her and vice-versa all the time.”

An explosion sounds in the background.

“Give her a call, ok?” Tony continues. “I’ve gotta go.”

He calls Bobbi, who’s happy to spot him, but as it happens, she’s out of town as well. She’s returning tomorrow, so they agree that he’ll stop by tomorrow night around nine or ten to pick up the supplies. But when he knocks at her door the next night, it takes a few minutes for her to open up, and when she does, she gives him a strange look, like she’s surprised to see him.

“Hey,” he says. “Uh, the chemicals?”

“Oh!” Her face clears. “Of course, I totally forgot. Come in, I’ll get it down for you.”

He steps into the apartment, and she leads him to the living room before disappearing into her lab. While she’s gone, he takes the opportunity to look around, and something is off. For the past few months, her living room has been full of suitcases and strewn-around clothing, since Peter Parker had (kind of? He’s not entirely sure what the deal was) moved in, but now, it’s neat and empty of anything that isn’t hers. He notices an open bottle of wine on the coffee table, with a half-full wine glass sitting atop a square black coaster.

She comes back with a dewar in one hand and a large plastic container labeled ‘Potassium Nitrate’ in the other, hands him the plastic container, which he puts into his backpack as she sets the dewar on the floor. “How are you traveling? This thing is heavy.”

“I was planning to take a cab. I’ll be fine. Thanks for this.” He looks around again at the uncluttered living room. “Hey, where’s Spider-Man? And all of his stuff?”

She looks over her shoulder at the relatively-empty living room, then turns back to him, looking slightly confused, and for a second Clint imagines that she just lost the guy and forgot, just like she forgot he was coming over tonight. “Oh! Uh, things are going well for him at work, so he got his own place.” She bites her lower lip and worries it with her teeth, before continuing, “And...we broke up.”

Which explains the spaciness. “Oh, I'm... sorry to hear that.” He's not sorry to hear that—it was super weird having his ex-wife and his friend, sometimes teammate, dating each other—but ‘I'm sorry’ is a thing you say when you hear about a breakup, isn't it? And if she’s hurting, that’s enough to make him genuinely sorry.

“It's fine. We weren't really serious, the whole living-together thing notwithstanding,” she scrunches up her nose, “and he realized that he's still in love with his ex, and so now they're trying to make things work, and....” She gives a small shrug.

“And you were collateral damage, huh? That's shitty.” He points to the wine on the coffee table. “You need a drinking buddy? I don’t have plans tonight, and I’m game if you want to spill all his most embarrassing secrets.”

She grins. “I’ll get another glass.”

\---

“It's not like that,” Bobbi says, slurring her S’s a little, once her glass is empty. “I’m happy for him. People should be with people that they love.”

“Yeah.” He sighs. “Wouldn't it be nice if it were that simple?”

“No, it _is_ , that's what I'm trying to say. It’s,” she pauses for a hiccup, “stupidly simple. The Earth is billions of years old and the average human is only around for, what, eighty years of that? And we waste so much time of it just...” She picks her hand up in the air with a flourish and waves it around, instead of finishing the sentence.

Now he realizes that she's been a bit more wobbly than usual all evening. He picks up the wine bottle and sees that it’s almost empty. “This is my first glass. How much have you had?”

She waves away the bottle with a scowl. “I’m _not_ drunk.”

Now there’s a sentence he doesn’t like hearing. He can’t help but imagine the way it used to come out of his father’s mouth, loud and angry and inevitably followed by the sound of glass breaking against the kitchen wall, cabinets being slammed shut, new whiskey stains on the carpet. And then came the beatings; always the beatings.

He puts the wine bottle back down on the table. “You know who usually says they’re not drunk like that?”

“Drunk people, wow, you’re _so_ smart.” She takes the bottle he just set down and tops off her glass, then leans back against her part of the couch in an imperious sprawl. “It doesn’t work, anyway. Want to hear something funny? With the serum in my blood, you’d think that I wouldn’t be able to get drunk, or that it would take an extraordinary amount of alcohol, but it doesn’t take me any more than it used to. It just doesn’t last, I only stay drunk for, like, fifteen minutes, and then I’m back to normal. I have to pee a shit-ton while my body breaks it down, though. And lots of water, or I get an instant hangover. This evening alone, I was drunk, and then I wasn't, and then I was again, but now—anyway,” she leans over and taps the side of his glass with the back of a finger, “drink up, Barton.”

She’s not his father, she’s never been anything like his father, and yet, something in her demeanor makes him hesitate. “Have I ever mentioned that I hate it when you call me Barton?”

“Fine.” She rolls her eyes again, and he doesn’t like that, either. “Drink up, _sport_.”

They would drink in the circus, at night, in close circles to keep warm, and that was what enabled him to separate the idea of alcohol in general from his childhood associations with it, but only up to a certain point. He can't take it when alcohol turns people mean.

He sets down his glass. “I should go.”

“What?” Her face falls. “You promised!”

“I know what I said, but you’ve got an attitude, and I feel like if I stay, you’re going to say something mean, and I can’t, Bobbi, you _know_ that.”

The pleading snaps her out of it; her eyes sharpen and all the languidness drains out of her body as she sits back up. “I’m sorry, Clint. I didn’t mean to—I’ll stop. I’ll be nice.”

He tilts his head. “Promise?”

“Promise.” She puts a hand on his shoulder. “Nothing but fun drunk Bobbi from here on out.”

The knot in his stomach dissipates at her touch, and he lets out a breath of a laugh and picks his glass back up, bringing it to his mouth. “Okay, then.”

“Good. We’ll have fun.” She smiles, and takes back the hand that was on his shoulder, tucking her hair behind her ear and leaning on her arm against the couch. “Since whenyway—I mean—wait.” He hides his smile behind his hand as she shakes her head to clear out the thought. “I mean, anyway, when have you ever known me to be a mean drunk?”

This is true, but, “Okay, but when have I ever known you to get drunk after a breakup?”

Bobbi smirks, raising a finger and pointing it at him. “Ha, shows what you know. When Ka-Zar went back to the Savage Land, I got super plastered, left Fury a bunch of messages on his machine, including a five-part rant about the lack of quality bath products in the jungle. I'm pretty sure he's still hanging onto the tapes for blackmail purposes.”

Her teasing tone makes him feel much better, and he picks his drink back up. “Aha, so the real reason you left S.H.I.E.L.D. finally comes out.”

She laughs and finishes her glass.

\---

When the wine is done, she ducks into the kitchen and comes back a few minutes later with a bottle of vodka and a red Skittles bag.

“I mean, it’s not actually Skittles vodka, but I figure we can just put them in the shots and chew them, right?”

She sits down next to him on the couch and pours out shots for the two of them, then rips open the Skittles bag and drops a few pieces in each shot glass. They pick up their glasses and _clink_ them together, then Clint tips back his cup and empties the contents into his mouth. It’s a little more than he expected, so he swallows quickly, candy and all. The vodka burns, and he breaks into a coughing fit at the same time that Bobbi yelps in pain.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, alarmed.

Her face is screwed up into a grimace. “Bit my _cheek_!”

So he swallowed the candy whole, and she broke skin trying to chew hers. “Looks like we’re doing great,” he says with a laugh.

“Second time’s a charm?” she says, holding up the bag.

“Let’s do it.”

On the next try, they put the Skittles between their teeth like sugar cubes and sip the vodka like tea, which is okay, but messy when Bobbi sneezes and an orange Skittle goes flying across the table and then vodka comes out her nose. “Ow, ow, ow!” she howls, hand over her face, as he clutches his stomach, doubled over in laughter. But they keep going, and they finally get the hang of it at around shot five, which is when he stops counting.

“Back in the day,” Bobbi’s saying, “he used to sell the Bugle pictures of Spider-Man that he staged himself. _Nobody_ could get pictures of him! And here comes this kid—”

“How did no one figure it out?”

“The oooooooooonly person in the whole world who can take pictures of Spider-Man!” She snorts and puts her glass back onto the coffee table. “Even his aunt doesn’t know, and she raised him!”

Clint shakes his head, laughing. “Remember? When he unmasked for us, and then Jessica Jones was like, ‘Oh, we went to high school together,’ and he didn’t remember her and then he called her—”

“ _Coma girl_!” they say together, and they take another shot.

\---

He’s not sure exactly how they get from laughing and having a great time to her crying loudly into his shoulder, with him handing her tissues one at a time out of a box on his lap.

“What’s so wrong with me?” she says, on a wail. “How come nobody loves me?”

Clint rubs her back through her T-shirt, between her shoulder blades, not knowing what to say, just wanting to make it all better. “Nothing’s wrong with you, you’re perfect, he’s just an idiot. I’ll take care of it, okay? I’ll go over and beat him up for you. Of course, he could grind me into paste without breaking a sweat, but it’s all right, I’ll catch him by surprise. No, he can’t be caught by surprise, he has that spider-sense thing, but it’s worth it. I’ll go yell at him and tell him what an idiot he is if he can’t see that you’re the most amazing woman in the world, and that he’s not fit to lick your boots.”

She laughs, and then she grabs a tissue from the box and blows her nose into it, then starts crying again, into the tissue. He hands her a new tissue for her eyes, and she looks up at him as she takes it from him. Her eyes are red, the lower lids shining with tears, and the blue of her irises is so striking, which strikes him as a very weird thought to have at the moment, and then she closes her eyes and wipes them with the clean tissue and she starts to laugh.

She blows her nose again into the second tissue, then crumples the two tissues into a single ball, opens her eyes and looks around, but there are no garbage bins nearby. With a shrug, she deposits the tissues onto the coffee table, right next to her shot glass and the open Skittles bag. Then she turns to him, shaking her head.

“ _You’re_ the idiot,” she says, bumping her shoulder into him. “I’m not crying over _him_.”

“Oh.” He frowns. What does that—and then it hits him like a cement truck. “Oh, fuuuuuck.” He closes his eyes and falls slowly against the arm of the couch, then peeks out at her out of the corner of his eye.

She rubs her cheek with her sleeve and looks at the blank television screen. “Yeah.” She steals a tissue off his lap and covers her face with it.

All of a sudden, he feels very small. “I made you cry?” He sits up, and she looks at him, and he feels like he’s been punched in the stomach by the pain he sees in her eyes. “ _I_ did that? Bobbi, I don’t want to make you cry, you’re my...you’re my...” He’s starting to tear up, too, and he’s had too much to even have any desire to fight it, so he just lets the waterworks go. The tears are rolling down his cheeks as he says, “The last thing I would _ever_ want to do is hurt you.”

That only makes her sob harder.

“Why me?” he asks, wiping his eyes. “You deserve someone on your level, who doesn't ruin everything he touches. Why would you cry over _me_?”

“Don't fucking _do_ that! I hate to hear you talk about yourself that way.” She pours herself another shot, and they both watch the clear liquid run into the glass, but she doesn't pick it up; she just stares at it for a few seconds, then looks back at him. “What's happened to you? You never used to sell yourself short like this.”

Everything’s going too fast; he barely even remembers what he just said, what she’s talking about, but he grabs her hand in a fist and rocks his head back and forth against it. “I don't know, Bobbi, I'm such a mess, I'm such a mess, I stayed here to try and make you feel better and now I'm crying all over your couch.”

“It’s okay,” she says weepily, “I don’t even _like_ this couch.”

After that, they take deep breaths, trying to stymie the crying, and it goes in cycles, calming down and crying and calming down and crying. At one point when neither of them is crying, they make eye contact, and they bring their faces together, but it’s clumsy and they keep knocking teeth.

“Oh my _God_! I forgot how to _kiss_ you!” Bobbi brings a hand up to her face and covers her eyes, hanging her head. “This is hopeless, it’s hopeless.”

He shakes his head and moves her hand away from her face. “Oh, honey, you didn’t forget how to kiss me, you just had a thousand shots and lost all your spatial awareness. Here, just relax, I’ll show you.”

Clint brings his hands to her cheeks, which are flushed and heated from all the alcohol, and she leans in. They gaze into each other’s eyes for a few moments, enjoying the warmth generated between the two of them, their breaths mingling together, and the buzzing in his head is probably at least two-thirds the alcohol, but it’s also her, and the moment feels positively magical.

Time slows down.

She licks her lips, and he moves in.

Her lips are soft, so soft, and wet, and he can smell sugar on her breath, but she tastes like—

Like herself, like his wife who he loved who he pushed away who he lost who was dead who came back to life who _let_ him back into her life who keeps slipping through his fingers every time he reaches for her, every time he wakes up in his bed alone, the woman he swore to love and cherish forever and ever and ever, and here she is.

He rests his forehead against hers, trying to catch his breath.

“See?” he says. “Just like riding a bike.”

Bobbi’s eyes fly open, and she snorts seemingly despite herself. “You’re terrible. God, I love you. Oh, shit. Is there any chance I didn’t say that out loud?”

“Say what out loud?”

“Thanks, but it’s too late, I’m sober again. And I _really_ need to use the bathroom.” She flees, and he takes the opportunity to fill up her water glass, only spilling a few drops when he starts pouring before the pitcher is centered over the cup. It’s great that she loves him, just wonderful, except that tomorrow she’ll be sober and have a headache and push him away again, just like...just like, before, when she pushed him away—his mind is a little too fuzzy to remember the details, but she definitely did push him away at some point in the past, he’s sure of it.

He hears the bathroom door open, but she doesn't come back out to the living room, so he stands up to go looking for her, but he stands too fast and has to sit back down again. Taking a deep breath, he gets up again, more slowly, then picks up the shot glasses from the coffee table, brings them over to the sink, then fills his hands with water from the sink and drinks two handfuls, which clears his mind a bit, and he gets her glass from the living room and goes looking for her.

He finds her in her bedroom, standing over a dresser, looking at pictures. He walks up behind her, looking over her shoulder—they’re old, from the West Coast Avengers, some barbecue they held for Tigra’s birthday, everyone in swimsuits, a chicken fight between her and Tigra, Bobbi on Clint's shoulders and Tigra on Simon’s. Bobbi and Tigra have their hands locked, both of them laughing, and his hands are curled around her thighs protectively, making sure she felt completely secure.

In the present, Bobbi looks up at him. Wordlessly, he hands her the glass, and their hands brush as she takes it from him. She brings the water to her lips and finishes the water in one long drink.

He moves to kiss her again, but she holds up a hand in front of her mouth, and he ends up with an open mouth against her palm. “No?”

She shakes her head, smiling sadly. “No, I’m sober now, and you’re not, and it doesn’t feel right.”

“Okay.” His mind is still foggy, but there’s something he wants to ask, and he’s not sure how to say it. “Are, uh...are we back together?”

“Oh, Clint.”

His heart sinks. “No?”

“Not no. I don’t know. You’re drunk, and so was I until five minutes ago, and we can’t...decide...right now.” Despite her words, she reaches for his cheek, stroking her palm down his five o’clock shadow. He holds himself back from catching her fingers with his mouth. “The last time we got back together, you were the one who kept pushing for it. I was trying to close myself off from my old life, and you broke down my defenses and dared me to take a leap of faith.”

He grins. “So what you're saying is that it's your turn to come crawling to me on your knees.”

He likes the gleam in her eyes, as she says, “You wicked boy—you just like me on my knees.”

The image pops, unbidden, into his mind: her smiling at him from the shag carpet rug next to her bed, in that pink lace nightie she used to wear, and yes, on her knees, and he’s hit with a flash of lust so strong he has to reach out to the dresser to prevent himself from keeling over.

The real Bobbi—the fully dressed one—clears her throat.

“ _Je_ -sus,” he says, blinking back to reality. “We should—maybe we should have this conversation tomorrow.”

She's fighting a smile, he can tell. “Good idea.”

He checks his watch. “Should I go?”

“No, don’t be silly. You can’t walk in a straight line, and it’s late. Just stay over, and we'll talk in the morning, like you said. I'll give you Peter's toothbrush that he left here.” It takes him a second to realize she's kidding. “I'll find a spare. Come on.”

His new sleepover toothbrush is purple, and she puts it in the little porcelain cup on the counter right next to hers. She makes room for him in her bed, and they fall asleep spooning, and her hair gets in his mouth, but he doesn’t mind.


End file.
